Attack of the 2023 Oscar Nominees!

Guess who? It's 10 o'clock. Do you care where your parents are? The following feature has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. It is intended for mature audiences and parental discretion is advised.

Emergency alert. Defense Corps forces reported just moments ago. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not the drill. At this time, we are requesting the immediate.

And orderly evacuation of the vicinity. The Coast Guard and the Navy have been alerted and are standing by on the eastern seaboard. And it continues to burn out of control. It has been regular. Every five to ten minutes, there has been another convoy of units, fire.

Companies, paramedics... A citywide emergency has been declared. Police officers are still on tactical full alert. 2,000 National Guardsmen are standing by. Air defense warning read.

It's time for Movie Meltdown's Attack of the Killers soundtrack. The live transmission has begun, and we're into the final. Hour of hell. What's up and welcome to movie meltdowns attack of the killer soundtrack i am brian and joining me i said to you on our email we've gone around the sun one more time back again joining me is eric stem for our annual event whether we like it or not i don't know but Sooner or later, we've decided. I try to give you the out.

Every year, I'm like, have you come to your senses yet? I'm like, yeah, okay. What can I say? No, he's too nice. Oh, man.

All right, here we go. I try to let you escape every year, and you're like, okay. At some point, I'm going to say, hey. No, I'm just kidding. I have a real life, damn it.

Right? What's going on here? I know better on my end, so I keep trying to give you the option. But here we are. I appreciate that.

For our Oscar spectacular. So every year we get together around this time and we discuss all of the nominees, both song and score, for the Oscars. Nominees each year for the Oscars. So we're back once again. You never really know what you're going to get, except for one person.

That's right. We won't open with her, but we'll be there in a minute. So, for those who heard, you probably know exactly what Brian is talking about. So, yeah, this is. I mean, I decided to at least address it a little bit as we get there this year.

So, there's some things we're going to discuss, and we'll get to that. But we usually bounce back and forth, so we will start with score first. So, first up is... American Fiction, right? American Fiction.

You want to talk about that? Yeah. Yes. Composed by Laura Karpman. Laura Karpman, yeah.

And. Yeah, this is the overall score to American Fiction. © transcript Emily Beynon piano plays softly piano plays softly piano plays softly piano plays softly Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So American fiction. Yeah, this is, um, this was a really, uh, really great. One of my favorite, I think of, you know, I had actually many favorites, uh, In this list that was amongst the nominees this year, because I thought they did a really... Usually it's like you get really a good one or two, but I think there was a lot of really great ones this year. I also feel like it's super eclectic this year.

Yes. It's a lot of Oscar-sounding stuff a lot of years, and then this year is very different stuff. Right, exactly. Yeah, you have your epic orchestral score. you have jazz, which is this one you have, and then a very unique style, which we'll talk about a little bit, but yeah, everything is different and they all are good in, in that difference. It's not just, you know, all this is different and it's bad.

So that's why I think this year is for me, if I were actually voting on who's going to win the original score, gosh, this is going to be a tough choice for whoever's on that committee. Yeah. So a little more of a challenge again, because it's, I don't know. Does that make it better or worse? It makes it harder to pick a lane, I guess, because there's so many distinct options.

Right. But then they're almost not competing with each other in style because they're so different. So I don't know. Right. They're both a challenge.

And I think it makes it better for the movie industry. Yeah. Because then you have, I think we, in the past, I would say four years out of the, I guess we've done this five or so, something like that. It's been a while. Yeah.

I know how long we've been doing this series overall. I'm trying to remember when you got roped in. We'll get back to that in a minute, too. But it's definitely been about five years. The last four years have been really good picks here.

So, yeah, starting with Laura Cartman. So just right off the bat, for those who don't know Laura, she's obviously an American composer, but she's done a lot of stuff. She's done film, television, video games, theater, and also has done several works in the concerto. Hall. She's Juilliard trained, so she was primarily a jazz player, but also a scat singer as well.

So she would do scatting in bars at night and kind of like jazz player during the day kind of thing. And she and her husband, this is an interesting one of those who know the avant-garde composers of early 20th century, she studied with Milton Babbitt, who was a composer known for this approach to music that was very, I guess, quite new at the time, but serialism and total serialism. He used to call himself a maximalist. In other words, he would just use all kinds of um, you know, the extended techniques that a voice and, or an instrument can make and the most, uh, most, uh, you know, complicated way. And so it's, um, certainly, uh, stretches the boundaries of, of music.

And she kind of brings that to the table here in, in some of the tracks of which I thought was pretty cool. But anyway, um, she is, uh, I would say hits on a lot of diverse jazz elements and a lot of her tracks. Like, So you hear a lot of post-bop, you hear a lot of hard bop and free jazz. There are some big band elements that are sort of reminiscent of swing, which is kind of cool. And the thing is, is that like you get that for the first four tracks, but then all of a sudden, if you listen to Humans Remain, for instance, that all of a sudden opens up a world of this very orchestrated atmospheric work that's more contemplative and lush, you know, and it's atmosphere i guess in nature and so i kind of thought that was you know at first i was thinking well there's this movie is going to be dominated by you know primarily the jazz style which which makes a lot of sense but then she goes off and does different things and i like some of what really kind of um you know as a composer myself what i really appreciate were tracks like bookstore and drips because they start out very harmonically um daring you know and then they uh so like for example drips for instance gets gets into this kind of pointillistic approach in music and then all of a sudden it opens up to this very lush atmospheric string orchestra you know kind of sound and it's uh it it shows the two different worlds that laura is as a composer but also just you know that she's presenting in this um in this movie which i thought was probably one of the coolest parts of the score is that it's two worlds coming together.

When it first started, I think I really got into it and I kind of liked it as the sort of smooth jazz way that she was taking it. As it went on, I feel like, and maybe, I don't know, I listened to quite a bit of it. I was kind of going through the whole thing and I still, I think I wanted more of a bebopping kind of jazz. I think it does kind of get into almost like from the film end of it, almost like interstitial music. It's almost like, here's what he is when he's walking down the street, heading to the next location.

I feel like some of it is just sort of going on in the background, which I know we kind of address every year. It's like, how much does the music move to the forefront and should it, versus how much does it sort of just exist behind your characters and their actions and all of that. So I feel like this definitely kind of worked as like, what's going on in the background while our character is doing whatever, but then I was once again trying to be like, do I want to listen to this by itself as a piece? I don't know, I don't know how much, again, I think it's impressive as it starts, but as it went on, I didn't notice as many changes as, like, I feel like the last couple of years we've had some really big jazz wins that were, like, kind of big and went into totally different places, where this is Yeah.

Like Terrence Blanchard did that in some of the films that were nominated. I feel like this one sort of stuck to that basic thing that it does, and it did it really well, but I don't know. I think it would get kind of slow if you were just sitting around listening to this for hours on end. Yes, certainly. I agree that if you look at the whole score in total, you would see a lot of the tracks are, like you said, it's this... it's not meant to get in the way of the narrative.

And so you're, you're definitely, she's definitely choosing to, to do this more of a backtrack to, you know, the scene around it. But, you know, what's interesting, you know, if you again, go back to say bookstore or drips, you know, you'll, you'll find that it's interesting to listen to just a, you know, musically speaking, because the way she uses the, the instrumentation, the way she uses the, The melodic lines, you can get something out of that, I think. Because a lot of times composers will, if they're not really interested in weaving compositional elements in a really complicated way, oftentimes they'll just lay down some chords or chord progressions, and it will just kind of be there. But there's nothing really musically evolving out of that.

And I think I'll give her kudos. And even the backtrack-y type of stuff, it does have things that evolve. Musically. And so I kind of like... I'm maybe 80% leaning towards this would be a good thing to listen to by itself.

Yeah. You know, so... But I hear what you're saying. As I was listening to it, I was like, at its best moments, I think it's almost trying to evoke like a Vince Giraldi sort of thing, which is a huge compliment for me because I'm like, that's one of the few people that like, in that type of music, I would... Which again, he's like... the king of that type of music.

Like somebody who like defined a sound more or less and like just knew how to do it his whole career. And so like in its best moments, I think it is doing that where it's bringing about like almost its own playfulness to the background, you know, and, and not overshadowing what's going on, but still kind of doing its own thing. I don't know that all of the tracks were that for me, but I was like at his best, like I will give that, that huge compliment that I'm like, I think when it works it's, it definitely has that kind of style to it that is trying to kind of do its own thing and have a fun sort of playful quality to what's going on in the music. Right. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Are we ready to switch gears to song? The fire inside the fire inside.

Let's just get right to it before I start my complaining. I can see the smoke coming out of your ears from the fire inside. You know, The Fire Inside from the movie Flaming Hot, sung by Becky G. Music and lyric by Diane Warren. Oh, you got places to go.

You're not going there slow. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. They will tell you you're crazy. They will call you a fool. They will think they can stop you, but there's no stopping you.

They can't put out what you got inside you. No way to put out that flame. Nothing can hold you back. . . . . . . . We'll be right back. No one can kill your life When you got the fire inside When you got the fire inside And.

Oh, you're gonna own this life Cause. You got the fire inside Cause you got. The fire, you got the fire. You got the power inside you So let them all laugh You'll have the last laugh They can't put out what you got inside you No way to put out the flame Nothing can hold you back No one can kill your vibe When you got the fire inside When you got the fire inside And oh, you're gonna own this life Cause you got the fire inside Cause you got the fire, you. Got the fire, oh.

All right. So would you, would you like to go through my normal version of complaining first? Or would you like a, a just jaw dropping announcement? Just like years in the making this dark secret that I have. I can share that now if you'd like.

Yeah, either or as a, The Secret sounds interesting, though. Here's the thing, and I don't think I realized it until recently. Here's the deep, dark secret. After all these years of complaining about her, I like one of her songs. You're kidding me.

I went back over the years, and that's the thing. You have to go all the way back. Oh, I see. Okay. Her very first song that she was nominated for in, again, back to my favorites because I like very classy films, in Mannequin.

Okay we're going we're going back that far. Nothing's gonna stop us now is actually written by her now i think this is also a difference it's co-written by her okay so maybe albert hammond who also wrote it with her brought something else to it but i remember at the time really liking that song it comes up again once a week i'll try to mix things up and throw it on some uh your throwback Thursday, throw on the 80s channel. Right. It comes up every time because it's a go-to for that era. And I'm like, you know.

So you like 50% Diane Warren? I was like, Starship was already plenty cheesy by the time they became Starship. But this is a fun song. It's poppy as hell. It is not like there's anything to it.

But for a cheesy pop song, it is very fun. Right. And she co-wrote it. So I'm just like, all right, all right, let's give her that. And then I look back, I believe even before that, which she, I don't know how, I don't know how Rhythm of the Night performed by DeBarge didn't get nominated for an Oscar because it should have.

It was in a film. Right. But she also wrote that like the year or two before that. So that was a fun bop song too. So I was like, the more I went into it, I was like, okay, so maybe she just used to have it and.

She lost it. Right. Because if you go back to the mid-80s, I liked her cheesy pop songs. I thought you were going to say that you like this one. No, no.

That is too deep and dark a secret. That's a bad secret. And not true. And that's my thing. As I'm listening to it this year, that's what I came back to.

I was just like, it starts, and I'm listening to it, and I'm like, of course. It's the same thing I say every year. It's the most straightforward, basic... generic version of a song. Yeah we're talking about the Disney formula not even that. Like I feel like here's what I realized today because I listened to it again today no offense to Becky G she's a fine singer but I was listening to it again and I'm like here's what it feels like to me it's almost like when you're asking AI to make you art yes it feels like you just plug in the thing you want something sort of uplifting and inspiring keyword add a reggae beat add in this reggae beat add in a modern pop swing to it and blah blah this and go and it just spits out the most basic generic thing yeah and it works on that basic generic level and i'm just like and i think that's what's so frustrating it was like I can't like, I see what it's trying to do.

And that's why she ends up in these movies every year, because it's like, we need a basic inspiring song to work into this, you know, upbeat movie about people that are overcoming odds. And I don't know. Yeah. It's just so annoying. Oh no.

Yeah. I feel exactly the opposite. You know, we started out talking about how every year there seems to be a really good mix of orchestral scores or just, you know, film scores in general, not simply just orchestral, but film scores that really are top-notch, high-quality, great. But the last three years, I'm feeling the opposite about the song selections because, as you say, it seems like to me that they're choosing songs that really are, maybe it's because they feel like they have to pick it because the movie is popular and it did well at the box office. So, okay, since this movie did well, we now have to find some song in it that is going to, you know, be a part of the song list.

I feel like that's always part of the strategy. And that's, yeah. I think that's how Disney rode that wave for those, during its high years. Right. But now they've kind of hit that point.

Disney songs aren't even up for Oscars a lot of years because everybody's sort of scraping the bottom. Everybody, yeah. And that's the thing. It's like, yeah, I feel like, so I was thinking about this as I was coming over here too. It's like, okay, what are, what is missing?

And I think your description of the AI thing is perfect. It actually hits a nail on the head there. But when I think about, okay, what makes a good song? There are three things, right? We talk about, most people when they talk about a good song, they talk about the melody, right?

It's something that's very catchy, right? You have an interesting chord progression or musical language that you're kind of tapping into. And that could be like chord progressions, that could be use of instrumentation and Stuff that's going to work with what the melody is doing and the singer too. The singer's style and sound of their voice has a lot to do with the success of the song as well. And so if you get that generic vocal stuff going, it's going to sound like an AI production like you're talking about.

Again, because they're always huge projects and she has big studios, she always gets solid singers each year. So it's always like the singer has nothing to do with it because she doesn't write, they don't write the songs. It's almost always a woman. And like, they bring in these talented singers, but like, they're just given this nothing to work with. And like, so it always just becomes sort of a wash of like, well, it's a shame you're talented because it's going to waste here.

Yeah. Yeah. They're certainly good. They're, they're trained. And, but it's very much like, uh, speaking is to say a news anchor, right?

They all have the same, that news anchor accent, right? So that's, that, vocal inflections and so on. But anyway, I mean, the other thing to think about too, which is a huge part, and I was talking to a friend of mine about this the other day, about lyrics. You know, lyrics, you know, if you look at some of the stuff that was done in, say, you know, the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I feel, and maybe this is an old man raising the cane, I'm going to get off my lawn kind of thing. I do that every episode.

I will put that disclaimer out there. That's totally probably what I'm doing here. But I feel that lyrics used to be more poetic. And take, for example, so I'm going to get on my little rant here. Take, for example, Sting's Fortress Around My Heart.

That encapsulates, in my opinion, all the things that we're talking about here. So if you think about, for example. Core progressions and use of, you know, interesting modulations to different key centers and things like that. Check out, if you want to just YouTube this, you could check out Rick Beato. I don't know if you've ever seen or looked at some of his podcasts, but he tears apart all these different well-known pop tunes and so forth.

And he actually did interview Sting at one point to talk about his style, but he tears apart Fortress Around My Heart. Why it's so interesting to, musically speaking, right? But if you look at the lyrics and you read the lyrics, right, you have, it's a poem. It's not just, you know, this, okay, let's find something to rhyme at every end of the stanza, right? You have something like, under the ruins of a walled city, crumbling towers and beams of yellow lights, no flags of truce, no cries of pity, the siege guns have been pounding through the nights.

I mean, that's poetic stuff, right? And Sting puts the melody to that with his unique voice. I think it just, everything comes together in this really great song. And I think what's missing, what's that, that that's kind of presenting this AI emptiness that you're talking about is the lack of those things. It's just not grabbing and not interesting to listen to.

And maybe, maybe this is the, the actual epitome of, we don't want this to get in the way of the movie at all. But I feel that songs are supposed to not do that. They're supposed to actually get in the way, right? Especially in this movie. This very heavy drama about the creation of Flaming Hot Cheetos.

We really want to put this song in the background and focus on the drama involved here. It disrupts the food industry, as it's said. And so, come on. Well, I think, and again, I like that you said emptiness. And I think that's what I'm going to come back to.

And actually, a couple more times. I'm going to address that. with at least two more of our songwriters as we go through here is, and I think this is the other end of the spectrum. This is the very blow end where it's like, that's the problem to me is like, yes, all these words go together and it makes the uplifting point you're trying to make. They rhyme. But it feels so dead.

Like there's just no feeling to it. There is no emotion to it, which is like the key to songwriting. You know, it's like specifically lyrics, like you need to be able to feel what this person is putting into their song, and then they're trying to convey to the audience, and, like, there is none of that in kind of any of these songs she's done in recent years, I'm like, it's just, it hits all the, it's, again, it's almost like the script points. It's like, we need it to be this kind of uplifting message. We need it to say.

Give yourself some applause. You're sure worth it. Right. Or you can do it. You can beat the Cheetos industry.

Like, it just needs to be, like, these key things. Be sure to, you know, kind of hammer that home. You're flaming hot Cheetos. It's going to change the world. It is.

It kind of did. But the song is not going to change the world because there's nothing else to it. Like, it is just hitting those points that you program in your computer. Right. Wouldn't it be great if Diane Warren was like an AI program?

There really was, no? That would be really funny if actually they found that she was using ChatGPT. Like, you know, they found, what was it, some of the sports, there was a magazine that went under recently because some of the article writers, I guess some of the- I. Thought some of the bigger newspapers got busted for that. Last year too.

Yeah, journalists were using ChatGPT to write their articles. And just none of it was even a person writing it. Which granted, I mean- Especially if you're trying to fill a physical paper still. Sports Illustrated, that's it. Who the hell does that.

You know? Right. You've got so much paper to fill. And they used to employ hundreds and hundreds of people to do one newspaper. They don't bring those people in anymore.

There's barely enough to crank out a physical piece of paper now. So, like, I understand. The temptation is there. Yeah. How would you fill up that much newspaper?

I think it was Sports Illustrated. Yeah. They were the ones. A year or so ago, there was like the bigger newspapers that got busted for it. Right.

Mainstream newspapers that were just throwing in random AI crap. So it's like, this is where we're heading and maybe we've been there for a while. You could be right. I was going to say that. We're going to work on that conspiracy theory.

To throw in again, I will pretend like I've done some research. So we have comments from Mrs. Warren. I'm sure she loves our show as it is. So, remember, this is a story about Cheetos.

The song is all about passion. It's the theme song not only for the movie Flamin' Hot, but for a theme song for dreamers everywhere that has fire inside them to make their dreams come true. Do you buy any of that crap? Well, again, even that comment sounds super generic. That sounded like it was written by AI.

Well, it was like the press person put that together for her to say when she got to the interview. It's like it's the most generic crap. That you say to somebody in the... Again, I've done these interviews. I'm sure everybody says crap to me, too.

So, like, I don't know. It just feels like, from the get-go, this was just made up of those pieces that we need to put in a movie. It happens to be this movie, so we need some Cheeto-themed things to, like, bring some inspiring messages together, and here we are. Right, yeah. And to at least...

I threw out earlier we were going to discuss how long this nonsense has been going on. Number one... Interesting. Interesting. Is that a coincidence?

Is it feeding off of my hatred? I don't know. I think it is. Maybe it is because I was like, I didn't even know for sure. Like, I guess I maybe knew the name that first year, but like I was not invested at that point.

And she hadn't been, it was like 13 years. Like she's been nominated a ton, but there was like a 13 year gap where she just, I guess she was still writing, but just wasn't getting nominated. And like it hit like 2014. Yeah. And then she got nominated, and every year since then, she's just the go-to.

It's like, well, which Diane Warren song are we going to go with? I don't know if she's doing more than one every year to make sure they have options, or they just give it one, and it's just a, all right, well, here it is. Hand it over. We've got to put it in this year. So every year since then.

So the overall, let's see, of what she's done with her career, she says, is this. From her website? This is directly from her. I read it. The quote is, and now the number of Oscars I've been nominated for has caught up with my emotional age, which is 15.

She's been nominated 15 times over the years. Okay. 15 times for this songwriter. Think about it. What does that say about the Oscars?

That's where we are. That's the world we live in. 15 times she's been nominated. That's why I feel that there is such a distinct... difference between what's being nominated in the score category and what's being nominated in the songs. And it's just, yeah, you get different.

Definitely different. Different results. Style options. Yeah. So.

Shall we jump into somebody who has been nominated a lot of times but deserves it? I will continue to use her as a reference point as we move forward. As we move forward, yes. At least in the songwriting. She'll become a verb at the end of this.

But if we're moving forward, if we want to keep a theme going, someone else who's been nominated a lot over the years... yes john williams would be our pal john. Williams yeah so i i i think we all know what we're talking about here so this is and even harrison ford uh is is coming back for this one too so um but yeah. Somebody else who won't go into retirement yes exactly all right i'll do another sequel to whatever dumb movie. I got yeah i have to my bathroom needs renovating he's the grumpiest old bastard ever but like you gotta love him like even when he comes back it's like Because every one of his huge. Properties, he revisited.

Like, he came back to Star Wars. He came back to Blade Runner. He came back to Indiana Jones. Again, even when the last one tanked, he was like, all right, one more, damn it. God, Spielberg won't even come back, but I'll do it.

I'll do it. Right. Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like sacrificial. Yeah.

But, yeah, and John Williams is, like, threatening to retire, remember? I think somebody said that. Last year we were like, wow, this might be his last year. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I didn't say I was retiring fully.

He said I was done with Star Wars. Right. Which I think he is, but that's only because nobody wants to make Star Wars movies anymore. I think, yeah. They've all died now, so.

He is a composer for life. And that's, again, certainly he's well-deserved of this honor. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we probably don't need a lot of introduction here. But for those who don't know, John Williams, he's basically been connected with Steven Spielberg's movies for, I guess, when he was last nominated.

This was The Fablemans, right? That was their 50th anniversary collaboration, which was kind of amazing. But yeah, Star Wars, Jaws, Superman, Indiana Jones, of course, E.T., Schindler's List, so forth. Just a few of those smaller movies. Those small, little.

Spielberg-y movies, yeah. Of course, I always like to talk about his beginnings, which is the movie Images. This is the one that follows this unstable children's author who finds herself engulfed in these hallucinations while she's at a vacation home, which is a pretty cool little setting, right? But he was actually. A lot more experimental in his earlier days. when he was first starting out.

But this one, along with all the other big movies that I talked about, this one is his, you know, most of his output is this epic orchestral scores. And so for those who, you know, who like his orchestral scores, which actually go around the country to different orchestras, even our own Louisville Orchestra does this every year. And you can hear it, hear his, let's say, you know. Jaws or Superman. Greatest Hits tracks, yeah.

His suites just with the orchestra itself. This one won't disappoint. And the thing that I like about it is that it does two things. One is that he doesn't lose the identity of the Indiana Jones series. And so obviously he weaves back the old themes and you hear a lot of the styles that he has always kind of remained true to in this particular film.

But the cool thing about this is that he always tries to introduce something new. And I feel like he did this with Star Wars series as well. It wasn't just, okay, when somebody gets into trouble, this is my copy and paste orchestration. This is the trouble theme. This is the trouble theme.

And here's the. Sound that I'm going to make when something happens. So if it's not a theme, it's a go-to sound or chord progression or something of that sort. He doesn't do that. Every time he comes back to the same type of series, whether it's Star Wars Part 5000 or whatever, he's always trying to make the pieces themselves new, not only just trying to use different instrumentation, but also just trying to weave the film into different scales and sound worlds.

So I think that was kind of well done in this particular score, which almost kind of in a way made it a little newer than say the last Indiana Jones, you know? And so kudos, kudos to John Williams for, and that's kind of the person he is. That's the, he's a very old school, not old, like an eight, but he is, I mean, he is, but, but he's old school in the sense that, yeah, he writes on paper still. And he's, he thinks about every note. He's very conscious about, you know, the choices, just making it not only something that, would work for a film, but also something that could exist by itself. and I definitely would encourage you to listen to like just listen to the the track American Spy or Bombs Away which is actually a more you know riveting kind of driven score you'll see that you could just sit back and just listen to it and it's a piece in and of itself.

Thank you. © transcript Emily Beynon so so. Yeah, this is going to be hard. We go from jazz to this, which, again, these are Laura's and John's pieces are dynamically different, but they bring something really amazing musically, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I was so impressed with with this. And again, not that I'm always impressed with John Williams, because I am. But in going into, like, again, every couple of years, we'd get a new Star Wars, at least in the last few years. Well, go back a few years. And then every couple of years, we've had a gap now.

But with, like, revisiting that every few years, it is, like, as you said, he does different things with different moments in the film, but I feel like he's almost locked into more of a specific sound with star wars so then i was like all right well let's you know compare it to that but take a look at this as a separate thing and i think it is one of those he has to because he's built up such a almost musical universe in star wars he does almost have the okay this is the stressful thing that we return to this is the princess theme when she's on screen like so there's almost stuff he has to drop in at specific moments because the film almost needs it to work like that right Whereas once we got into this, I was like, I'm so impressed with how much it just sort of does its own thing.

And like, it doesn't forget that it's Indiana Jones. It works that theme in when it needs to. But there's huge gaps where it does not work in any recognizable Indiana Jones theme. Right. And it's like it just goes off on its own and does its own musical thing.

And then it's still, like, intense when it needs to be. It's still, like, you know, just sort of bombastic. And, you know, when it needs to be a big, you know, score moment, it still delivers on that point. But it doesn't do it in the easy, familiar way that would be, you know, even... five movies in you know star wars is so many more this is still five movies in a series it would be real easy to just be like hey you know like that one thing in the third one when i did this and like it'd be easy to plug and play but he doesn't ever do that he just writes an entirely new piece of music and then you know peppers in a little you know indiana jones reoccurring theme here and there right but like this one in particular i feel like is so much more its own thing than maybe any of the other.

Four it's well thought out yeah definitely i would agree that it's um you know, he is, he's trying to, like I said, you know, he's trying to write a piece thinking, thinking of it as a challenge to write a new piece, but with a familiar theme and, you know, familiar trajectory in the movie, because it's always the same, you know, where you have this adventure seeker going out and finding something. And then there's, there's some sort of epic conclusion to that, but he's, he's got the chops. I mean, he has, he can pull out the You know, the chalice with the harps and then all of a sudden you get the marches and the classical, you know, big sounding 19th century, you know, romantic scores. He has all that at his fingertips.

And you would think, I guess, after 90 years, he would be good at that. And he is. He was always good at that. But it would be so easy to just fall back on doing what you always do. Copy and paste, yeah.

Don't get that at all with this one. Like, I think it really does do its own thing. And. I don't know. Like it is impressive that this far in, you know, it's like that, that he's not just, just phoning it in.

Like so many people, again, as you see into their career, not just composers, but like directors, actors. I think there's so many that like they. do this great stuff when they're young and then they get old and just gets kind of familiar and like. Or, or they hire in their own orchestrators and like, you know, they. Get, they barely show up. They go, here's some notes here.

All right. It's mine now. I claim my minions do it. Yeah. We won't mention composers that do that, but you know, yeah, he doesn't do that.

Yeah. And that one thing that I also respect about him is that he is, he's, he's always seeking that kind of variety. Like, you know, catch me if you can, you know, he's always trying to, he'll, he'll go back and forth. But yeah, I. Think this is certainly...

One thing I like about this also, I'll mention one more thing. As a composer, this is not an easy score to write. It's not like he's jumping on, say, a computer that has a software program that has all these things built into it, and it's like, I'm just pushing a few buttons. I mean, the skill that it takes to write every single note that means something in every single instrument is still being appreciated. And that's kind of, again, maybe I'm an old man raising the cane in the air, going to get off my lawn, but I like that.

I like the fact that we're still really rewarding that. So I'm just going to say, yeah, I'm happy with this. What I think is interesting in this series too, because you, again, I keep comparing it to Star Wars, but it's probably his most well-known and kind of biggest grouping of stuff that he's written. But in something like that, you're almost, it's in its own universe. So it almost is isolated from everything else.

What's interesting about Indiana Jones is he actually exists in this world. Like he is, you know, he's fighting Nazis, but like it also like exists in our time periods. So as these go along, this story also continues to move forward in time. So he can tie it to real world places and events and just, different sounds that were happening at the time this story is taking place that like you can't do in another galaxy. But like here, it's almost grounded enough that it gives him a way to work in influences that maybe for him growing up or for this character, like it gives you a way to ground it to earth and like the timeline we're in versus, you know, something that just is in a vacuum more or less where this can feel a little more grounded to, humanity and like the story that we're telling with this guy like this poor old man that's still running around looking for treasure yeah bless his heart that's my favorite part of dialogue destiny is like it just addresses the fact he's like i just i don't need to be doing this anymore right i'm tired let me go sit down and by the end of the movie that's kind of where it ends up it's just like let somebody else go look for this stuff i don't want to have to do it anymore.

Yeah he should be the retired professor right. He should be he kind of is in this one and they still they just win. He's on the golf course. Well, it's like Sylvester Stallone in his Rambo movies. It's like, come on.

Rambo maybe. Rocky's the one that kills me. The last couple, he kept trying to go back in the ring and legit fight. And I'm like, you're an old man. They're not going to let you get in the ring.

At least by the time we hit Creed, he stays outside the ring. But I think those other last two, he was still going in front of the board being like, hey guys, I can still do it. Let me get in there. And I'm like, you're an old man. They will kill you in there.

That just got more and more ridiculous. I'm like, You can coach for the rest of your life, but you can't get in the ring. Craziness. So, thankfully, Indy, he's a crotchety old man, and he's going to go look for some treasure if he's forced to, like he is in this movie. Right, exactly.

But, yeah, as much fun as I think the Harrison sort of brings to that role, it's never bad. dialed back a notch when you've got John Williams involved. He just A-game every time. It's amazing. Yeah, I agree. Fully agree.

Alright. If we're bouncing back to the songs, this one is the one that's sort of out in its own little area. Almost in a world that doesn't exist, well, certainly in a world that doesn't exist at all, but doesn't exist anymore even in, like, movie music. This is I'm Just Kin. From the movie Barbie, sung by Ryan Gosling and a cast of kins.

Music and lyrics by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt. Doesn't seem to matter what I do. I'm always number two No one knows how hard. I tried Oh, I, I have feelings that I can't explain Driving me insane All my life been. So polite, but I'll sleep alone tonight.

Cause I'm just king. Anywhere else I be a king. Is it my destiny. To live and die a life of blood, fragility? I'm just king.

Where I see love, she sees a friend. What will it take for her to. See the man behind the tent and fight for me? I want to know what it's like to love to be the real thing. Is it a crime?

Am I not hot? Where do me my feelings? And is my love finally here? Or am I dreaming? I'm just Cain, anywhere else I'd be a Cain.

Is it my destiny. To live a. Life of longevity? I'm just Cain, where I see love, she sees a friend. What will it take for her to see the man behind the tent and fight for me?

I'm just Ken and I'm enough. And I'm great at doing stuff. So hey, check me out. Yeah, I'm just Ken. I will say I like Barbie a lot.

And I like, I mean, Ryan Gosling. There's a reason he's nominated. I know everybody else got snubbed in the cast and crew. But he's amazing. Like, he really is good.

But the song is so, like, old school movie musical, like, in such a silly way that it's, like, it can't exist outside of the movie. So it's not one of those you can just put on your mix of songs anymore without somebody going, what the hell is this? Assuming there's anyone left on the planet who hasn't seen Barbie, which probably is not true. But it's still, like, such a jarring thing to, like, work this in with other songs that aren't part of this specific movie. Like it, it's hard for, especially this song, there's other ones in this that work on their own, but this one is so ingrained in the story.

It makes no sense outside of the story. It's fine. Again, it's like, it's the, it's so specific about what it is. It's kind of hard to even be objective about it. Like you almost have to take into context everything that's going on in the plot for the song to even make sense.

So it's, I don't know, this one is way more complicated to look at as just a song. Yeah. You sort of have to ask yourself like, well, what is, what does it mean to be, you know, song, a nominated song, right? Best song in a particular movie. And it does it, does it have to be actually a good song or does it have to just be so unique to the movie that it works, you know, in propelling narration forward and so forth.

Right. So, Like you said, this thing is not going to be able to, you're not going to get this on a playlist and it makes sense in any other case. You don't hear this on the radio. No. And like there are plenty of other songs on the soundtrack that you do, especially right now, but this one just doesn't work like that.

No. It's so, it's almost just a scene from the movie. Right. And you're hearing the audio track from it, but it's not like a separate. Which again, maybe is what we were talking about.

Like before, it's like, is the music supposed to be in the background or is it in the middle of what's going on in the scene? And like this one is a hundred, but granted it's a song, not the score, but it's a hundred percent part of what's going on on screen. So you can't even separate it. It's like, it has to be this complete package. So again, how do you like separate out just this part of the song is going to get nominated, but we're not going to, you know, nominate the rest of the things like actors or directors or anything right exactly for jumping on that band i'm sure that yeah i'm sure that discussion is going around oh yeah there's plenty of it which again i won't even start on that that's its own separate thing yeah but so is this song it's a very different so i don't know had you seen the movie.

I admit I have not seen the movie. It took me a while. Almost because I knew what it was about, not because I had a problem with it like so many other weird dudes out there did. But mine was just like, man, this looks depressing. And then I finally watched it and was like, man, this is depressing.

For a movie about a toy, it's heavy. I'm like, I'm already going with a lot of existential crisis in my life. I don't need to watch more of it. So watching Barbie was, was rough. I gotta say.

That was my understanding was that this was supposed to be a very serious movie about serious, you know, societal questions and issues. And so this song does not really sound like a Ken, you know, reflecting on, I mean, again, it almost seemed satirical. Again. Well, and they do that. Like they are, that's why this movie works so well.

It somehow balances both of those. It is, complete satire and complete comedy on one hand. But at the same time, there's way bigger societal comments being made. And also just, that's the thing. Everybody wants to get off on the feminist end of it.

I was like, I don't, I mean, that's there. But to me, the way bigger thing is just the, the sad, what the hell am I doing with my life portion of it? That is both Barbie and Ken are kind of like, no, really, this is what I'm doing every day. And, why and like again it becomes such a bigger thing to tackle once you get into that movie which is why i think the movie is amazing but this is probably the silliest moment in the movie which is saying something so it's kind of weird that you to try to look at just this moment because again i think that role that the way that that character is written and the way that gosling performs is is just phenomenal for what should be so silly right they they both get like this weight brought to them underneath.

Again, he's still hilarious in the, in the part, but there is just this underlying sadness about what he's going through. And there's this weird delusional thing he's doing to try to deal with it, but there's this underlying thing going on. That's really heavy. Right. That again, doesn't necessarily come through in this very silly song.

So. Yeah, that's why I was thinking this seems like an odd choice for all the songs that are. It's so different from what else is going on in the movie that it is weird to just try to pull it out and listen to it on its own. You never know. You never know.

They do love some Gosling this year, but we will see. Next up, back to score, we are going with Killers of the Flower Moon, and this is composed by Robbie Robertson. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. And this is a posthumous nomination. That's what I'm wondering. Of all the things, which we have a lot of good scores this year, as you said, but if there's anything that kind of gives this a little edge, this is sort of the last thing he completed. Yeah.

So, you know, you can't really give him any more after this. This might be his chance. Yeah, exactly. I don't think I've run into a nomination where a composer has gotten a posthumous nomination, but. Actors a lot of times, but yeah, composers, not so much.

Not so much, yeah. So, I mean, I admit I don't know a lot about Robbie Robertson. And so this is kind of a really interesting score. You know, he's a Canadian musician. He was lead guitarist for Bob Dylan in the mid-late 1960s.

How the band came together. They were Bob Dylan's band and became the band. Right, so. But he's done a lot of really cool things. He's worked with director Martin Scorsese, and he's done The Last Waltz in the 1970s.

This is literally his last one, but before that, you remember he did The Irishman in 2019. I was thinking maybe this was like, I knew he'd known Scorsese since The Last Waltz and before, so they'd been friends forever. But then I went back looking at his list. I was like, oh, he's been working with Scorsese this whole time. Yeah, Silence.

He's been, yeah, like all of these different scores over the years. He's like every couple of movies Scorsese did, he'd come back and go work with Robbie Robertson again. So, yeah, I didn't realize how consistently he'd worked with Scorsese if nobody else. Yeah, yeah. And I thought, you know, there are several things that he did really well in this score.

So he actually, we're talking about like what kind of philosophy do you have as a film score guy? composer, do you like to have your music guide or work integrally with the film or serve more as a backdrop to enhance the scenery and the narrative that is more taken upon by other things in the film? And he, I think, exemplifies the latter, where he's trying to not make the music really too much in-your-face necessarily, more than just using it as a backdrop to kind of move the narrative forward. And so he's got like a completely different approach than say John Williams. But what I do like about the entire score is the versatility of it. So you see, and because this is, you know, basically, you know, a piece about, or a film about the Osage nation, you know, we're, we're going to have a lot of elements that musically represent that, you know, so.

Traditional music of, their people mixed with the Robbie Robertson style. Right. And also like, but the other side of the thing, you know, because this is, this is, these are two characters being, and if, if you will put up against each other. So you have fiddle, fiddle dancing tune. You got sort of this new Orleans, early jazz like number.

There's a ragtime inspired piece. There's so much different musical elements that kind of come in towards the end. which I think is really interesting. But then the one that we'll kind of revisit later, which is actually a song that came from this movie, you have a chant, right? You have other elements that speak to it. And the cool thing is that he kind of got a really unique ensemble together to bring this to the forefront.

So it wasn't just, okay, I'm going to get onto the computer and use something, a DAW, which is a digital audio workstation. to bring out these instruments. He actually did put together guitars, keyboards, mandolins. He had a cello. He had a mando cello, which is actually basically a larger mandolin. He had a zither.

I was going to say, there's synth. Because that's what was weird is I listened to it, and it's got all these traditional instruments going on, and then it just kind of throws in this weird synth that I'm like, whoa, wait, that was cool. And just unexpected. For what else is going on, you would expect it to get kind of. almost bogged down and have to be traditional, have to stick with what's, you know, true to the nation. And I'm like, but you're also the composer, you can put in whatever you want.

So I liked that he sort of threw in these more modern touches here and there that were just to keep things interesting almost. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I mean, he'll bring folk instruments like the harmonica, right?

So, and so, yeah, you do get like out of this score, you certainly get, you get the place, you get the time, You get all these things that I think– like I can't remember a tune from it, but I'm definitely– it immediately put me where I needed to be. So we're talking about outside of Oklahoma territory, I think. So, yeah. So it's– I think he did a good job with this, and it's unfortunate that he's not around to. What I was thinking, yeah.

Yeah. Like I said, I don't think I realized how much he'd worked in scores over the years. But yeah, I just sort of knew him as the person that he was, which is funny that the way you're describing it also seems like him. What little I knew of him, you know, just as a guy, I almost knew him. It's a shame he didn't catch on more as like an actor because I just recently watched, I remember as a kid, really thinking Carney was great.

And I rewatched it recently. I was like, this is a weird movie, but he's, he's co-lead, you know, in the movie. And it's one of the times he was like, all right, he was a big enough star. I guess they were like, let's put you in a movie. He's got such a cool presence about him that like, he's so, and this is like, and he interviews us all with him too.

He's so laid back and he just seems like a cool reserved rockstar kind of a guy. And so once I got into this and that main theme starts, it's just sort of groove oriented, that guitar based one that I'm like, this seems like him in score form. Like it's just a cool laid back kind of a groove. and like it just he found a way to work it into the story and then it sort of weaves its way through all of these like then later you get through the other ones that have the more traditional instruments and then he throws in synth and like he throws in all this other stuff but it still sort of has that overall kind of attitude towards it that holds the whole thing together Yeah. He has kind of a, you know, in a way Hans Zimmer does that a lot where he'll, you know, research the geographic area.

He'll, he'll research and try to remain true to the, I guess the region's instrumentation even though he's got a particular style that he's going to bring to the table each time, at least he's bringing some new instruments and you know, it's not, again, not just using sort of pre-recorded synth sounds and so forth. So I think that, Yeah, it definitely contributed to that variety, which I thought was cool. This, yeah, I was just going to say, it may have the edge because of him passing away, but because of what I think is so solid about it, I wouldn't be upset if it won. So whatever reason gets it there, there are worse things that could win an Oscar. And I think it depends on, yeah, again, if you're one of the types that say, okay, this has got to be on my library and my track listings, uh list and i need to be able to listen to this outside of the movie you might be disappointed in terms of again it.

Would almost work background music but yeah if you just had it on again we're doing something else driving through kind of works yeah the chanting might confuse you when those come up but you know the regular musical themes i think are still pretty solid. But yeah it's it definitely works wonderfully for the movie so yeah no complaints here. Yeah Hey, everybody. This is Tim Capello from the Lost Boys. And you are now listening to Movie Meltdown, baby.

Yeah. All right, bouncing back to song. This is from the documentary American Symphony. This is It Never Went Away, sung by John Batiste and music and lyric by John Batiste and Dan Wilson. It never went away.

Oh The feeling's just the same Oh Every. Time I see your face. Oh It's never going away. Thought I was a wise lad When your plan got last Thought. I was, I got a detour along the way Summertime adventure That's what we were meant for I need you and that's never going to change It.

Never went away. Oh Every time I see your face. Oh The feeling's just the same, oh. It's never going away. Looking for adventure That's what we were meant for.

And that's never going to change. It never went away. Every time I see your face The feeling's. Just the same. So are you a John Batiste person?

I don't know a lot about him other than I know he gained a lot of popularity as a songwriter, and he has worked with people that are usual suspects in my field of music. But I don't really have a lot of John Batiste CDs. See, I thought maybe you'd have more with him because I think he at least seems to take himself more seriously as a composer, I feel like. For somebody who I knew of specifically because he was on a late night talk show, which is kind of how that, I mean, there've been so many, like you get such a huge, you know, market there and you get a huge budget that they keep bringing in pretty big names to be the house band more or less for whatever the talk show is for that time of night and whatever network they're on.

So there've been a lot of them in the last 10 or 20 years, but. that's how I originally knew him. I don't think I knew of him before he showed up on the late show. And then as soon as he got popular, he left notice, but yeah. And I kind of liked the new guy, no offense. Um, but as far as once he got into, I started hearing like his songs that were more like lyrical stuff like this.

I was like, and not to compare one artist to another, but I've certainly, I got on that bandwagon of, Lady Gaga sounds a lot like Madonna. I'm like, you know what? You're kind of right. I feel like it's not, I feel like they know it and they're inspired by these same people. And we all kind of do that.

So that having been said with John Batiste, I always feel like he's a fancier John legend and almost of his own doing. Like, I don't know that he is fancier, but he seems like he's trying to present himself as a more polished version. But I'm like, I don't know. I like, I, I'm not, like, a huge John Legend fan, but what I know of his stuff is very real and very, like, his songs are kind of heartfelt and, like, he's trying to do that same sort of jazzy R & B style, but, like, he has really good lyrics to sort of go with it. I don't know.

Sometimes Batiste seems like he's trying too hard to do that. Yeah. I don't know. Like, this one, I at least... I re-listened to it again today, and I was like, lyrically, I think it works...

Again, to return to what we said earlier, because lyrically it is heartfelt. Like if you, again, once I found out what the documentary was about, I was like, oh, well, no, this is real. Like this is a real song about his wife and what they're going through. And like, this is a real thing. So lyrically, I think it works because he's not phoning it in.

Because it is 100% stuff that he's dealing with and it's very heartfelt. Musically, again, I wanted to ask you, does that weird little reoccurring piano thing fit this song? I think it, you know, in terms of his craft. It just distracted me. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, well, I think in terms of his craft, he has a little more chops that he brings to the table. He does. He's very schooled. Yeah, I mean, and certainly that makes it a little more interesting than, say, the last two that we were talking about. But I think that he incorporates... more classical elements.

And I think as part of that, for me, it wasn't really distracting. I thought this was a nicely crafted song in terms of what the melody does, how the chord progressions interact, and with also the lyrics. And there's so much to consider, and you're talking about even things like rhythm, how is that going to incorporate itself? And so you have all those things that I think make for a well-done song. Again, is this something that I'm going to probably write home about?

I may not go home and buy a John Batiste CD, but I think it's, like you said... a lot of the songs, the reason why they're chosen is not necessarily because it's, it's going to be, you know, the top song, you know, of all time, but it's going to, it works very well with the movie. And this particular movie is a very personal, heartfelt tribute. And so you have, or, you know, story and in essence, two lives going on at one time in a way. And so I think, you know, when you listen to the song, if you connect with the, what's going on in his life, personally then i think you're going to connect with the song because it does it it strokes those those uh you know emotional elements pretty well again you feel it.

And i think that's distinctly different from what we said earlier without naming names again but i was like it doesn't feel like it was put together artificially it feels real and it feels grounded in what he's going through what his wife is going through like all of it feels like it sort of grew out of all of that. And it is organic in the way that it came together more or less. But yeah, I think I liked the, like, it has a very slow lead in that I kind of liked just sort of focusing on the piano. And like, I kind of liked that. And then it was just that weird little reoccurring thing that comes back into the song that I almost feel like it's, maybe it's just in a weird key or something, but it just, it almost felt like it was distracting from the lyrics because the lyrics were kind of doing their own thing and the piano otherwise was, fit the lyrics and then it would do that almost like he's showing off again like almost like he's trying to be a little fancier than he needs to be but again i do not doubt that he's like massively talented so and and again lyrically i think this is a great song right yeah all right back to some heavy hitters on the score so.

We have oppenheimer right on the table so And it looks like Ludvig Jørgensen is on the nominee list. And so Swedish composer, conductor, songwriter, record producer, wears a lot of different hats. did a lot of really interesting films. Like he's scored films for the Rocky franchise. Um, yeah, he started way more mainstream than I went back looking. I was like, Oh, look at all these cheesy movies he made that I was like, he's now super well respected.

And like, you would think is like super serious, but going back and looking through his other stuff, it was like, he started with some silly movies that I'm like, good for you, man. I like that. Oh yeah. And I think this is like, and I, you know, haven't seen the movie as well. It's, it's, uh, I remember coming out thinking that this was almost striking a middle ground between the backgrounds approach and the foreground.

Like, I could listen to this music outside of the movie, and it would be just as interesting, I think. To me, this seems different for him, what I know of him. Because, again, he's been working for years. I knew him as a name before. once he started getting into the different type of scores, because I think he got the most attention maybe when I first started noticing that name for when he did the Black Panther score. Right.

And he worked in a lot of traditional African instruments and music and entirely different approach to a score than you would expect from, you know, a normal Oscar score. Right. And then he also did the, the, score type music for the Mandalorian series, which is also working in weird sounds and like doing totally different. Like he just gets outside of the normal symphony sound. He starts experimenting with a lot of crazy stuff and then still sort of delivers this really polished sound.

And this to me almost sounds like what I would expect from an Oscar score. You know what I'm like? I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment, but I'm like with him and knowing his name, I expected it to be pretty different. And then I came in, I'm like, this is just a really good, you know, symphony sound. Like it's, it's really well done.

I can actually, I was listening to it for a long time and like, I could just sort of listen to this as its own piece, you know, it's like, it doesn't, but which I think is maybe harder to do with the more weird sounding ones. It's like, sometimes those work better in a limited, you know, this three minute song is really cool because it's so different, but you don't want two hours of that. Whereas this, I think you're just fine to kind of put this on and, and, enjoy listening to what he's doing for the whole run of the piece. So I was, yeah, I was kind of surprised knowing who he was that it's as traditional as it is. But again, that's not a, that's not a dig.

It's so impressive for what it is that like I could very easily sit and listen to this. Well, yeah. I mean, and the interesting thing talking about, you know, how you're, you're describing his unique style or unique approach to writing scores is coming in contact with more conventional modes of working here. I agree. I think you hear both of those approaches in this particular score.

But what's interesting is that you can tell he, even though when he goes the conventional route, the use of motives, like small little melodies, as well as referencing some really well-known works, and I'll talk about that in a second, but like Take, for example, Fission, right? So Fission starts out with this, you know, very relatively lush, you know, it's got, you know, he's, I think, primarily using the string orchestra in this particular score for the most part. But then he has this piano motive that's two notes, and it's usually a perfect fifth apart for those musicians out there. But then he gets into, he references, and this is my take from it, because this is about, obviously, the bomb. And so he references Polish composers, Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody.

And if you ever heard that score, it's also for string orchestra. And Threnody is, it was actually the full title, Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. Threnody takes, you know, say clusters of pitches that the violins will play and will slide them down. You down to a single pitch. And he does that in the Fission score, or I guess that track there.

You'll see he kind of references that sort of Penderecki-like Threnody approach, you know, to here's a cluster, here's a sound, this is referencing something very serious, and then we're going to get down to one note. So if you wanted to incorporate, you know, like a little track, you can incorporate Threnody in there. You can work that in. Thank you. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's really interesting, uh, how he, he does that. And unless you're like really, you know, diehard classical, you know, 20th century music fan, you probably wouldn't catch things like that. So I think he kind of does bring in some of his background as, as a conductor and composer into this in unique ways.

Um, the other track that you'll hear some of this is what we have done. Um, they have like his, what I mean by that's, this is kind of interesting. is that when you hear that two-note motive in Fission, it's not just, okay, that's just a cool sound and I'm done with it. He actually, when you listen to the track, What We Have Done, it comes back as a reflective moment. So he's trying to use these really two unique notes, this motive, if you will, in a very contemplative way. And so he's rounding out ideas in the actual score from the beginning to the end.

So that's kind of a really... thoughtful way that i i really appreciate as a composer thoughtful way of uh presenting a score to a film you know not just hey this this sounds neat now we're going to go to the next track you know so. Well i think it's that that he brings to these projects that is probably why he is who he is now and i think who he's going to be i think we've talked about this in the past that like there are those go-to names that we always come to and and you know as the John Williams are aging out, it's like, who's going to come in and be the new up every year for an Oscar. And I'm like this in the span of when we've been doing this, you know, just this music series, I didn't know this name.

And now I'm like, I feel like I'm going to see him. If not every year, every couple of years, he's going to be back with a really impressive score. So I think he's built up this, you know, like we said, he's been working for a long time, but I think because he's so talented, he's gotten to this level where, and is probably going to consistently continue putting out pretty impressive stuff. And I'll just add something, too. Like, as a musician and a composer, what I really appreciate is that– and this has been going on for the last couple years with a lot of these nominations– is that you get these scores that are actually using real musicians.

Because, like, one of the things I remember we were talking about. In the early 2000s– Real people. Gross. Well, you know, it's– I know, right? I mean– Well, you know, in the early 2000s, right, you get a lot of these sci-fi predictions that we're going to be, by 2023, we're all going to be using the computer.

There's not going to be any human playing instruments anymore. But you see the exact opposite happening here. Like, look at Terrence Blanchard and Defy Bloods. That uses, you know, an orchestra. Joransson uses an orchestra.

Real musicians playing the, you know, written scores. Again, Old Man with Cane, I guess, makes me happy, but This is a really cool thing. I'm seeing this respect for working with live musicians. And so I just thought I'd throw that in there. I think it goes through waves, artistically speaking, and not just music.

But I know we always talk about that watching a lot of horror. I'm like the practical effects thing. Like we went through that wave of everything CG and all the effects are going to be CG. And then this whole group of people got together and went, yeah, we don't like that. We love the real practical thing where real humans put together real gross stuff and then we show it on screen.

And like so that made this huge comeback. And like now they sort of go back and forth and you do whatever you want. So, I mean, I think they all kind of go through waves. I'm sure we'll hit another weird AI makes all our music synth. version of everything and then in another five ten years people come back to me like no we're gonna do an entirely real orchestra and we're gonna write things on paper again yes i think it'll i think it goes through those different periods and we're just in a good spot for that stuff. Now so yeah yeah it's good to see yeah.

All right for the song we are back to the uh the killers of the flower moon area I'm going to attempt this title as best I can, which we all know is a bad idea for me. This is Wazazi? That's Wazaji. Wazaji. See, I kept trying to get the Zsa Zsa in there.

It's very Zsa Zsa-esque. Wazaji. A song for my people. A song for my people, which is from the movie Killers of the Flower Moon. It is sung by the Osage Tribal Singers and music and lyric by Scott George.

Hey! Hey. Yay! Thank you. Hey!

Hey! Hey! Come back, little man! So I don't know. This is one of those we kind of had, or at least my response was, this is kind of when we got the RRR song.

I was like, do I get to talk about this? Do I know enough about this style of music to critique it in any way, shape, or form? I don't know that I deserve to on any of these pieces, truthfully. But I feel like when it gets very specific into a certain culture, it almost gets outside of the range of like, what do you do with it? You know, it's just like, unless you are immersed in that culture, does it even make sense to make any comments one way or the other?

So I'm just like, This seems like what I would assume this would sound like. It's done by the people who are of this culture. So I assume that it is accurate. So I'm like, yes, this works, I guess, in my mind that doesn't understand these things. Well, and I think, you know, if you go back to like what we were talking about with the two things that make a song, quote unquote, important enough to like make a nomination list, right?

That has to work very well with the film. And then the second thing is that it has to be good on its own, or at least this would be my criteria, right? So with regards to the film, absolutely, right? This is about the Osage people. This is actually– Wazaji means people of the Middle Water.

And so this is– the Wazaji actually was the name of the indigenous American tribe before it got watered down to a sage, you know, after a lot of colonization force migration and so forth. So, yeah. And so this is, um, this is something that I think is, is a personal attribute, you know, to, to, uh, what was going on in the movie. Obviously, again, you have those two forces that are working against each other. Um, but, um, but outside, outside of the movie, you're, you're absolutely right.

Unless you know, and are, you know, I guess this is something that means something to you personally, it's going to be hard to really say, compared to other, say, songs of the similar style and, you know, musical camp, you know, how do you objectively say, well, this one is better than others, you know, so. It's hard once it gets that immersed in a culture. Right. Which technically, this is my culture. If you believe what I've been told.

Right. Like every other dumb white person in this part of the world. Yeah, you've got Native American blood in you. Right. But again, I've been ruined by white people enough that I don't pretend like I know anything about this specific group enough to be able to critique it.

It did bring up what I wanted to see because, like I was saying, when you see something that takes place in this world and then you hear this music, you're like, oh, yeah, that seems right. Same thing when we had the RRR. It's from an entirely different part of the world. We get this song and I'm like, yeah, that seems right for that story. Do other people in other parts of the world do that in our direction?

If they're making a movie and it's taking place in a nightclub and they need American jazz playing, do they just... plug in some sort of generic American jazz, and they're like, yeah, that seems right, good enough. Right, and then a jazz expert comes in and says, absolutely, that's not bebop or verse bop. That's not how that works. Yeah, exactly. This is from the wrong era entirely.

So, yeah, I wonder if it works in opposite directions from other parts of the world. Right, yeah. I agree. But, you know, what is, I will say, the nice factor about this nomination is that it's not just, a song, a generic song that you would get. Cause you know, you could have gotten something that was just, you know, it was written in the style of.

You could have gotten a very popular songwriter. I wasn't sure if I wanted to jump into that name again, but it could have, it could have been that right. And which had absolutely no connection and was more of a generic way of telling the story. But what we got was the actual, style the actual performance um and so has that been done a lot the answer is probably no right so. Which again i will give credit to scorsese like he is that kind of director he wants to bring that level of realism to the story and also bring in you know this is the first native american that's been nominated for an actress you know so like the fact that he wanted to get a real person to represent these people not cast some white girl and be like now you're an indian princess go be pocahontas so yeah this is this is actually a real person that is representing this culture and so the song is kind of that same thing it's like i want to not just find people that work in Hollywood and say here's the generic version of what we're doing go write your generic song it matches it this is very immersed in the.

Culture singing about battling oil and greed you know yeah exactly. Always taking digs that's what we do that's right that's important so switching gears back to score speaking of unique very unique poor things poor things. Thank you. Okay, so Fendrix. So he's an interesting English musician and kind of has his own unique style.

Some people will call it electro-punk or ultra-modern pop. And he's got this baritone voice. Have you heard his songs? I don't know that I've heard him sing. Yeah, so it's like Lou Reed is what a lot of people compare his singing style to.

But yeah, he's basically... kind of surrounds himself with the music scene, the Windmill Pub in Brixton, and he's worked alongside bands such as Black Midi and Black Country and so forth. So he's coming from a traditional, I guess, pop background, but not traditional in the sense of like some of these pop-turned-score writers have other backgrounds to them that. Are more conventional. Yeah. More conventional, but this is not conventional.

And this is kind of an interesting aspect of this is that he really does bring a unique stamp. Like if, if you're going to create a person that is going to change the convention of writing music for film, um, you would want to bring somebody like Fendrix on. Right. So he, um, And he actually kind of reminds me a little bit of Toru Takamitsu as one of my favorite, I probably mentioned him before, one of my favorite composers. Japanese composer, lived in the 20th century, was kind of like the John Williams of his time in the sense that he not only wrote a lot of music for films, but he also wrote a lot of music for concert stage.

So he's known by a lot of people. But Takamitsu was... very into like writing music for these experimental films that took place in the 1960s so one is for example woman in the dunes and we probably talked about that one a little bit and uh where he takes snippets of these unconventional musical gestures and um uh ensembles you know so like for example like he'll take um an I'm tying this into what Fendrix does. Takamitsu will take two harps and tune one of them normally, but then detune the second one just a little flat compared to the first one, so that when you strum them both together, it sounds like an out-of-tune music box. It's a very beautiful sound, actually. Kind of bittersweet in that sense.

And this is what Fendrix does. He kind of takes the idea, he detunes one of the harps, actually, and but he's got this kind of like, he embraces musical styles that are very like, much like your more avant-garde pointillistic kind of experimental composers. I'm thinking like John Cage and Morton Feldman, for instance. And he's got a really dry studio recording sound, which again, it's like, you don't think about recording as an art form, but when you listen to this, you do because it, it, brings a dryness that most people try to put a lot of reverb on the sound and you get that very generic sound, but he doesn't. And he brings in also like high registers in the violins.

I mean, just really trying to take every convention and going, we're going to do something different than that. We're going to turn it on its head. The offness of this is so perfectly suited because I just mentioned it on a recent episode. I just went and saw poor things. And it is such a, again, the movie itself is off by design.

Like it is telling a weird story about a very strange character. And the fact that they don't really fit with the world around them, obviously you're going to want the score to reflect that. So this perfectly like fits in with just, it's like everything is sort of off kilter as you get into this music. And then it works in this human voice element at times that is like, again, almost works with the Gothic look and feel of what's going on with some of this movie. So it's like, it sort of balances all the weird stuff going on on screen that fits perfectly in with what's going on in the score as well.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It does grab, it grabs the sort of psychological elements to the film, I think pretty nicely. And you also get, again, it's, um, Can you remember any theme?

Or are you going to put this on your playlist when you get home? Yeah, that's what I was going to say. This one does not work outside of the movie, really. No, yeah. It's definitely for the movie.

Yeah. It would be hard to present this to a normal person on the street and be like, what do you think of this song? Right. And be like, what the hell is this? Yeah.

It was interesting. I was listening to it in the car, actually, with my son, who's like nine years old. And he was actually digging it. And he was like, dad, that's really. Kids are weird.

It's good. Yeah. Yeah. He was. He loved the.

Playfulness of a lot of the pieces. So yeah. I really enjoyed the movie itself. So I think this, this kind of works with it so well that yeah, it would be hard to have any other type of music really. Yeah.

And then I, yeah, I think the movie is improved by what he's doing with the score as well. Right. Yeah. So like, you know, to, to round it out, you know, we had nominees that were, were hitting the, traditional elements, but doing it very well in a well-crafted way. So like John Williams and then you have Laura Cartman who are taking, you know, traditional jazz and traditional epic orchestra scores and doing very well with it.

But then you have somebody who's just, Hey, I want to try something new here. I want to really develop something that might be of use later on. And I respect that too. So that's, that's why this whole crop I think is very hard. Like if I were on the committee, I'd have a hard time figuring out what is original score music.

Yeah. Mean and what is the best one, you know? It's a lot. It's a lot to deal with. Yeah.

Well, before we totally get to the last song, I did, I think, in at least one of the recent years, I did my own little honorable mention. And this one, as we got to the nominations, I was like, oh, well, it's kind of a shame. And I feel like it was a trade-off for the Kin song. Because if we're, you know, the Barbie soundtrack had a ton of stuff on it. But the fact that Dua Lipa didn't get nominated because she did get a Golden Globe nomination.

And I think her song is one of the few that works in a traditional way. Like it is legitimately on the radio all the time. Like it works as a song that is just a, you know, it's not often that you get danceable as part of your Oscar nominees. But it's like, it's a popular dance song, but if you listen to the lyrics, it actually, like, it was written for the movie. It does, in, again, it's a little more subtle.

Well, the other ones are slower, sadder song that we're going to get to. This one is a danceable pop song, but it's also got the through line in what minimal lyrics there are, they match what was going on in the movie. And I was like, you don't get that with a lot of poppier songs that still have, like, enough... attention to detail to be written thematically to fit the movie that they're going into. So again, they, they usually make a big deal of, was this written for the movie for it to be a contender for Oscars? And I was like, this is one of the few that I'm like, no, this obviously was.

And then instead he went with the silly Ken song. So I don't know. I feel like it's a little, a little annoying that she didn't get a nomination. I don't know that she would have won, but just saying of the more recent. And again, she's actually been around for years, but yeah, In those years, she's kind of grown on me as one of the more popular, somebody who's on the radio all the time, and yet every time I'm like, oh, this is actually a really good song.

So consistently, she's put out good stuff. So I thought it was kind of a shame they swapped out and instead went with the Kin song. They need to talk to you in advance. They really do. I mean, I think both of us, you should be on there to be voting and have a really tough time with this year on the score end.

Absolutely. They should come to me with the songs and be like, I'm still annoyed by last year that you know that Selena wrote a great song about her mental illness and instead they put another Diane Warren song on there so I'm like this was a really well song that was created specifically for this documentary that she made about this whole thing and a song that came out of it but no you didn't go with that one you went with this nonsense that Diane Warren put out again continuing to slam Diane. Warren she'll get richer as you do that oh yeah she again 15 nominations. I don't think she's hurting. Right.

But as far as going out, we are going to be going out on What Was I Made For? which is the song from Barbie, the other song. It is sung by Billie Eilish and it is music and lyric by Billie Eilish and Phineas O'Connell, which is her brother. This one, I have a weird personal connection to this one that makes me love it and yet I can't listen to it sometimes now. So it was a weird year for me, and this was, like, literally playing on the radio as horrible things were going on. So I have, like, this has a weird emotional impact on me.

But also, I mean, even before that, I'd heard this song. This is not your traditional pop song. Like, it is very sad. It is very slow. Like, as far as, again, it's not danceable.

It's, like, it's what Billy does a lot, but, like, it is very... measured and how it wants to approach this type of thing. And then as it gets into it, lyrically, it is just, I mean, truthfully, it's depressing, but again, it's like, I, I kind of love that. It's amazing that Billie Eilish has become the huge name that she has because a lot of her songs are, are again, they're very slow. They're very lyrically based. They're very like impressive vocally what she's able to do.

But they're not dance hits. They're not pop songs. But no joke, on the way here, I was listening to the song on the radio because they're still playing it. So it's like the power that she has in the industry, I guess, that she's built up enough of a following that cheesy pop radio that usually plays nothing but the five most popular and half of them garbage songs instead is bothering to work this in regularly is still kind of impressive, I feel like. So to me, that's sort of the...

The thing that puts this over the edge for me, if I were voting, I think this is the best song of the year, of the ones that we've been presented anyway. I like a few of the others, but I think this is by far better written. Yeah, I think this was, you know, it again worked for, I think, what I know of the background behind Barbie. Again, I haven't seen it, so I need to like probably go buy a ticket soon. And yeah, or I feel like it works either way.

Like if you didn't know, like if this was, if again, if you lived in a vacuum and didn't see Barbie, but you just heard this song, you'd be like, man, this is a heavy song. Right. And then if you watch the movie, you're like, Oh, it is entirely based in, you know, what the character herself is going through. So I think it, I think it isn't so caught up in itself that it doesn't work on its own. I think it could completely work as a depressing, sad song by itself.

Right. But it's just intensified when you know Barbie. Right. And I think that's a thing that, like, as you get older and you experience more uh, crises, if you will, existential or otherwise, you know, you, uh, you will, you will connect to songs in different ways than you did say, you know, when you were younger and you were more after say, you know, how fast is the guitar riff going or something of that sort. And so for this one, yeah, it, um, It didn't speak to me that much.

But again, that's mainly because I probably am coming at this from a different angle. I'm looking at it purely from the musical side of things. And so that's why I launched with my rant, I launched this talk about songs and what makes it interesting and so forth. And so I felt like this was, again, it kind of worked fine. And I think it probably...

For what Barbie was doing in a sense that it was more focused on driving home the message than it was about producing something musically amazing or what have you. And I get that. That's why you do a movie is that you have other elements that are important. So this one, I just was like, okay, well, it worked. Now, the thing is about the song, the singer.

I have never, I've had a hard time, I admit, connecting to Billie Eilish's like singing style. It's very airy. It's very sedate. It's very. Because that's the thing.

I've tried to listen to her in normal settings and like sometimes her lyrics are so low in the mix almost that you like lose that there's a song on, which is weird really. For someone who has this really strong voice, it's like she 75% of the time uses like, the real low end and the quiet version, but she has a really strong voice. If you listen to other pieces. It's like, yeah, my, my daughter's describes it as a whispering song voice, you know, and that's the thing. It's like, uh, you know, using a lot of air in your voice, uh, in that way can be very effective.

You know, you could actually, um, produce some kind of, let's say you're, you're trying to tackle something that is very personal, you know, and, um, But at some point, like a lot of really good songs do, you reach a very important climactic moment in the lyrics or what have you, where you're going to need to change the voice a little bit. I think that's what a really good vocalist will do, is that they'll kind of mix it up a little bit. So instead, Billy Joel did this pretty well. He would change actually the sound of his voice, just the timbre a little bit, just to drive home certain points on the lyrics. I was kind of I thought a little bit to myself that it would be interesting if Eilish did that, but she doesn't.

And I felt like it just kind of stayed static. In that way. I feel like she can do that. And I would almost like to see... Again, I don't know how it would work in this specific song, but in general, yeah, it's like the stuff that she's putting out, I would kind of like to see her experiment a little more with bigger vocals and then just... bringing kind of more vocally to it but i think yeah songwriting wise i think this again a song that says i think i've forgotten how to be happy is on the radio on the way here right you don't get that i was like hey that's my lament that's where i'm at these days yeah but it wasn't and again i don't think it's just feeding off of the movie because when she she did is of the people that were nominated for golden globes she just won this one and she got up there and was like I was in a really bad place as I was writing this.

So it's like, she brought a lot of, I think what was personal world, personal like trauma to like, okay. And now I have to mix this with Barbie. So luckily this is a really depressing Barbie movie. So it works to write this really depressing song. So again, I do think it's depressing, but I think it's impressive what it is that they're doing.

And that's the other thing I wanted to get into. Cause I really, the two of them together, Phineas is her brother and, They seem like the most adorable couple. They're not a couple. They're a family. But they've been together their whole life, and they've been writing music together since she started, since she was a teenager.

These two were sitting there writing music together. But I feel like so much of this, again, as I said, she's coming out of a bad situation. She's writing this heavy song, and these lyrics still, filtered through Barbie, feel personal. Right. Going back to Slam, our previous...

How is it that somebody with 40 years more experience is just phoning today? Cause I was looking at that. I was like, Billy is 22 at this point. She's been doing this since she was a teenager. Uh, let's see.

Diane is 67 this year. Right. So why is it that this kid? And then I was like, well, but the songs that I liked of Diane's, she was much, much younger. Is that it?

Is that you bring something to the table when you're, You're young and you're still like getting into the arts and you're like, maybe you're a little hungry trying to get the work as well. But also you're just bringing something a little more passionate to what it is that you do versus I've been doing this for the last 40 years. For God's sakes, I just need to cash a freaking paycheck. I think that's a really good point. You open up a...

You might open up a little can of worms here, but if you do look at older songwriters, you know, if you look at Billy Joel, who stopped actually. Who stopped, yeah. Who stopped. He was like, you know, I'm going to quit while I'm ahead here. But look at, like, for example, you know, your Beatles guys, right?

Or a guy. There's not so much left anymore. Yeah. Don't count Ringo. Or like, you know, yeah.

And if you look at, say... I mean, probably Sting has been relatively consistent, I think, in his output. I'm trying to think. But Paul Simon, I wasn't blown away by the last album that he. The Elton John and Bernie Taupin that like they give them all these awards recently I mean surprisingly all of a sudden Elton John speaking of Dua Lipa just did a duet with her last year but like he all of a sudden came out of this hibernation almost where he's been touring non-stop for like 25 years but hasn't really put out any new music he just shows up and plays the same 2030 song the Billy Joel model yeah the same thing Billy Joel does so like they both have just been touring non-stop or get a residency somewhere And just sit there and play the same songs over and over.

So it's weird to me that you can be that passionate and write these amazing, like Bernie Taupin putting together these amazing songs and Elton John singing them back in the day when they, again, they were, when they got their tribute lately, they're talking about living in an apartment together because they were so broke. Right. Then they like piecing together this stuff and working together to make these amazing songs. And then, so then you get, enough money and enough success that you just don't want to do that anymore? That I don't understand.

No, but I think to your point, though, I think you probably hit the nail on the head in the sense that, you know, great music, great songs come out of tragedy. They come out of being hungry and struggling. And so when you are, I don't know, I guess, taking care of your wealth and you're, yeah, I mean, what are you going to write about? My butler didn't, you know, give me my martini shaken well enough or what? And I think that's it.

I've thought that for years. I was like, you look at a band like U2, and it's like, what do you guys have to write about anymore? When you were kids, that's why you always come back to relationship songs. Because no matter how rich you are, your love life may still suck. So that's really all you can go to.

Other than that, I'm like, how do you understand how to write a song for a normal person to listen to? When your life is so different than everyone else in the world, when you're super rich and you can't even go out and connect with people anymore because you'll be mobbed if you're a big enough celebrity. So it's like, how do you still write a genuine song when you don't have a genuine life anymore? That's so weird. That's true.

And so much of, unfortunately, what songs, as opposed to say, Let's go back to our 90-year-old or so. I was going to come back around to that. Orchestral writer. He throws this out the window. The thing about, well, I think that's because writing songs has always been more geared towards the life of the youth, right?

So when you look at a majority of songs that are out there, a lot of it is about struggling, trying to make it, trying to build yourself up in a new world. But the other is also about love, right? Trying to get it on, which you don't do when you're an old person. Yeah, what are you going to write about when you're 70 years old or 67? Yeah, nobody wants anything to do with me anymore.

We're not going to talk about that. That's probably going to be turned off, right? And what style would you use? I mean, disco? I mean, I don't know.

This is what the kids got into in my day. Right, exactly, yeah. But the orchestral stuff, when you have. It's sort of timeless. Yeah, nobody knows your age, right?

But when you sing, like, hey, come on. Then you just get into Tom Waits territory. It's going to sound. You just get old and tired, and it fits the grit of your song. Well, that's another thing, too.

Yeah, you get to someplace like that. I will say the blues is probably an outlet that a lot of older singers can. There you go. Can keep doing pretty well but i. Guess that's why they call it the blue oh no wait he wasn't really doing the blues at all when he sang that that's still a poppy song you're doing it wrong elton and or bernie exactly i don't know that was just a weird thing as we got into this i was like here's this kid that's writing this super heartfelt depressing-ass song versus this woman that's been around doing it for her entire life.

Why is it so false on this end? But I'm like, maybe that's it. Maybe you just get to a point. Again, maybe your brain becomes the AI program of like, I've been doing this so long. I just plug this in here and plug this in there.

And there isn't any emotion anymore. Right. Unless you go through something personal that makes you write a personal song, if you're hired on to do a job and you've been doing it for 40 plus years, your brain just goes into autopilot and you like put this here, inspiring message here, build up here, pay off here. You know, it just, how do you not fall into that mode, I guess? Well, you know, Bob Dylan was known to say, you know, unless you travel in different spots or unless you try to, Do something different.

You're always going to be static and you're always going to do the same thing like you're talking about. So changing as an artist is a really hard thing to do because when you have something that is a winning ticket. Why would you change? And your record producers are not going to want that either, right? No.

So there's that pressure. Again, the production end of it never wants you to change. Diane may actually be wanting to change and she wants to write, you know, chant music. That's the thing. I was watching, because again, like I trash her so often, but I was like, I haven't seen much of her as a real person.

And I was watching, they were doing interviews about this Cheetos movie. And like, she was like making comments about like the inspiring message behind it or whatever. But then she got to the moment of talking about, she's like, it's Flamin' Hot, not the Cheetos, but you're eating Flamin' Cheetos, you're going to get Flamin' Hot whether you like it or not. I was like, that was pretty funny. She at least didn't, it'd be different if you're doing the Cheetos movie song and you also got up there and got fucking pretentious about it.

It would be insufferable. So at least she had a sense of humor. She at least realized the basic overall thing we're dealing with. It's kind of silly. It's kind of silly, but at the same time, this was a serious story that happened to a person, and we're telling that story, and blah, blah, it's a pretty rational song.

I don't know. Maybe she has these groundbreaking songs that are in her safe deposit box somewhere that we won't know until she dies. In years from now, yeah, she's going to have to wait so many years after she's gone, and then they can pry this open and be like, all right, we're going to share this with the world, and they'll be amazing. Right. Personal stories. touching songs that don't seem like a computer made right oh man well i don't know what to do with her she's there next year we have to deal with her instead we'll go out with billy who i enjoy much more as a singer and a songwriter so anything else to pass along any cool stuff that you've got in the works for the.

Future Just coming up, we were talking about this. The Youth Performing Arts School here has just recently collaborated with them on a symphonic band piece. And so that locally is going to come out or be premiered March 5 at Y-Pass. And so I've worked with Kevin Callahan, which has been a fantastic collaboration. And we've actually roped in several other university symphonic bands to to play it as well as part of a consortium, which was kind of a fun idea.

And so, uh, probably eight universities around Kentucky and including IUS here, uh, we'll, we'll perform it in the 2004, 2005 season or 2024, 25 season. Sorry. So yeah, going to be interesting, uh, year and got some other potential projects in the hopper. So working on it. Yeah.

All right. Well, thank you for joining me once again. Yeah. My pleasure. Don't come to your senses.

I guess we'll be back here next year. To the next trip around the sun. It happens real quick. As you get older, as we're speaking, as you get older, it goes by real quick. So prepare for your life to pass you by as you listen to this depressing song.

And with that, I will remind you, get a life and we'll provide the soundtrack. I used to float. Now I just fall down. I used to know, but I'm not sure now. What I was made.

For What was I made for. Taking a drive I was an. Ideal Not so alive Turns out I'm not. Real Just something you paid for. What was I made for?

Cause I, I I don't know how to. Feel But someday I might Someday I. Might Mm-hmm. Enjoyment I'm sad again Don't tell my boyfriend It's not what he's made. For Cause I, cause I, I don't know how to feel.

But I want to try. I don't know how to feel. But someday. Think I forgot how to be happy Something I'm not, but something I can be Something I wait. For Something I'm made for Something I'm made for.

Enough complaining about Diane Warren. No more complaining about Diane Warren. Till next year. Wait a minute. Sitting in her mansion going, are those jerks talking about me again?

Here we go. Let's listen to the meltdown thing. I bet they're going to complain about me this year too. They probably send it off to the producers. They go, this is actually good.

I wish we would have got a cease and desist order from her. I know. I could frame that. That would be actually pretty epic. Cease and desist.

Yeah. That would be funny though if she was like actually in a prison like trying to turn out all these pieces. I just want to put out some cool original music and they. Won't let me. They won't let me do my disco and my reggae piece.

Oh wait, they did it. Okay, you could have a little reggae. That's what's weird. She works with such drastically different people, and you think maybe it would mix it up and help. Because the one year before last was country, remember?

Didn't Reba do that? Yeah, that's right. I was like, so she did a country one, and this one's reggae, and then... Didn't she do one that was like... It was Spanish, right?

Probably. Like, again, every year she just gets shoved into whatever thing, and... They work in the, again, it's like you get your Casio keyboard and be like, samba beat. And she's like, now I write my cheesy song to that. Right.

That's what's more disturbing. It's like it doesn't change no matter how drastically the music style changes. They'll bring like these songs. Her style and lyrics don't really change. It's still the same cheesy nonsense.

Right. I know. Well, I thought I was done complaining about her. Well, no. No, that's fine.

They'll go in the car right home. Damn it! Warren! Warren! Yeah, right.

This episode is a production of Movie Meltdown, produced and edited by The Oddity Studios. For more on how to sponsor or support the show, email producer at moviemeltdown.com. Aloha-oh! Aloha-oh! Talk hard!

This program is a proud member of the Battleship Pretension Fleet.